


Habeas Corpus

by smilebackwards



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Animal Transformation, Kittens, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd made one harmless quip about backpedaling diva heiresses when she'd refused to sign the deal he'd been working through for the past three weeks and ended up a kitten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Habeas Corpus

**Author's Note:**

> Kitten AU! Written for [this](http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/2038.html?thread=1962486#t1962486) [](http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/profile)[**suitsmeme**](http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/) prompt. Basically, Harvey is turned into a kitten by a disgruntled witch-client and Mike picks him up off the street.

Alex Jameson had been a junior partner, first in line for the senior partner position Harvey just landed, when he'd taken on the Buchanan account. Things had seemed to be going fine for the first week, but then Jameson began to get increasingly paranoid and twitchy until he finally cracked and started ranting at Jessica in the middle of a boardroom meeting, pointing at Anna Buchanan and shouting, "She's a witch! She's a fucking witch!" He'd fled the building and proceeded to disappear off the map.

Ms. Buchanan had looked shocked and delicate.

This, Harvey finds, does not preclude her from being a fucking witch. He'd made one harmless quip about backpedaling diva heiresses when she'd refused to sign the deal he'd been working through for the past three weeks and ended up a kitten.

 _What the absolute hell,_ Harvey thinks, looking at his reflection in the polished glass of the exterior of Buchanan's five star hotel, which he'd managed to escape by clawing the shit out of the bellhop who brought up the champagne Harvey had called down to order back when he still thought the deal was going to go through. _At least I still look like I'm wearing a suit,_ he consoles himself, surveying the way a triangle of white points down through the brown fur on his chest.

Regardless, there's not much positive about this situation. He's a cat and as such has no access to the necessities of life, being, in descending order of importance: Donna, his Blackberry, bank account and office, and the stunning good looks which helped him to acquire the previous things. As much as it stings, he needs help.

Unfortunately, Pearson Hardman isn't exactly full of the type of people who would take in a kitten out of the kindness of their hearts. Harvey remembers Jessica once pushed a _pro bono_ case for the humane society on Louis, who tried to refuse it, citing a phobia produced by a bite from a Rottweiler during childhood. He'd taken it eventually because apparently the early psychological trauma was eclipsed by the present fear of Jessica's don't-push-me glare, but Harvey still thinks Louis lost that case on purpose.

Harvey yowls as something rolls over his tail.

"Oh, shit!" someone says and then a young man skids his bike to stop and walks it back over to Harvey. "Hey, I'm sorry," the guy says, crouching down to Harvey's newly low eye level.

He reaches out a hand to stoke Harvey's back and Harvey lets him because this kid, with his short, mussed brown hair and soft blue eyes, looks exactly like the type of person who would take in a kitten out of the kindness of his heart.

"I'm Mike," Mike says, "And _you_ are sitting in the middle of Park Avenue without a collar so either you're lost or some asshole left you on the curb."

 _Or I'm a high-powered lawyer who was recently transfigured into a kitten by a disgruntled witch-client,_ Harvey thinks, but he doesn't hold it against Mike for not including that in his list of options.

"Either way," Mike continues, "You can come home with me if you want."

This is how Harvey ends up stuffed inside a messenger bag and moving away from the Upper East Side and towards the less hospitable Harlem.

Mike's home turns out to be an apartment the size of a postage stamp and when Mike dumps Harvey onto his bed, the sheet thread count feels like 30 instead of the 3000 count Egyptian cotton that Harvey has grown accustomed to.

Mike places a dish of vaguely expired smelling milk down in front of him. Harvey thinks about turning his nose up at it, but he figures he's had worse during his years at Harvard where he dicked around for three quarters of each semester and then spent the last weeks before finals locked in his dorm room surrounded by reference books he wasn't actually supposed to have taken out of the library reading room and five day old pizza, so he sucks it down.

"I've got to go visit my grandmother," Mike says, taking away the empty dish and snapping a picture of Harvey with his outdated phone.

Harvey immediately writes a mental subpoena and labels the picture Exhibit A for the inevitable lawsuit he's going to slap Anna Buchanan with when this fucking witchcraft wears off.

He expects he'll end up with a tidy settlement because no one wants to take this kind of fuckery into a courtroom. And if they do, Harvey intends to finagle drawing Judge Berman who got a little too drunk at last December's holiday party and told Harvey she was a practicing wiccan and that the first tenet of magic was, like the physician's oath, do no harm.

Buchanan's new lawyers might be able to make a case for Harvey not having been physically harmed, just temporarily transmuted, but he can easily head that off at the pass with the psychological pain of having been turned into a kitten and missing God knows how many important cases which Jessica probably handed off to Louis thereby spreading pain to those clients in a horrible trickledown effect.

Also, Mike looks like he probably lives off ramen noodles so Harvey suspects he'll be losing at least a few pounds and his perfect, Rene-tailored suits will no longer fit like a glove which may be the very worst thing about this predicament.

"For my grandma," Mike explains, turning the phone around so Harvey can see the pixelated photo, "She's always telling me I need new friends."

 _Adopting a street cat is probably not what she meant,_ Harvey thinks, imagining Mike's grandmother doing whatever the elderly population's version of facepalming is.

"I'll be back in a few hours," Mike says turning on the TV and flipping to USA. "I steal cable from the neighbors," he says, "Enjoy."

Harvey has nothing better to do so he curls up on the massively uncomfortable couch Mike probably scavenged out of dumpster and watches an episode of White Collar. Then he watches another one because it's a marathon and he likes Neal's suits and Peter seems like the kind of competent FBI agent who gets the necessary evidence criminal lawyers need to prosecute.

Harvey almost doesn't notice when Mike comes back because he's too busy digging his claws into the couch cushion as Neal's plane explodes on screen, but then Mike starts shucking off clothing and Harvey's eye is drawn to him inescapably.

Harvey tries to make himself look away but as much as he likes being in control, he's never actually had huge amounts of _self_ -control and he's not blind to Mike's soft-featured attractiveness.

Regrettably, one of the many amenities Mike's hellhole of an apartment lacks is air-conditioning. Combined with the fact that New York is currently in the throes of what the news insists on calling the Heatpocalypse, this apparently leads to Mike sleeping in the nude.

Harvey sleeps on the couch.

\--

Harvey loses most of the next day because Mike's douche of a best friend Trevor comes over with an ounce of pot and he gets a little high from the smoke.

His less than coherent recollection is that Trevor said, "Mike, your cat looks like he needs to _reeelax_ ," and then blew a stream of smoke in his face.

Mike said, "Don't be an ass to my cat, man," and set Harvey on the table next to the open window.

Harvey glared over at Trevor and thought something like, _I could get you 3 months jail time for illegal possession plus another year for animal cruelty_ and then he pretty much passed out.

\--

Harvey wakes up the next morning to a relentless pounding on the door.

Mike falls out of bed, pulls on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt and unlocks the four deadbolts that are the only things standing between him and imminent murder in this part of town. "What?" Mike says blearily.

"Your rent is a week past due, Ross," the guy on the other side of the door says, sounding annoyed. "This happened last month too. If I don't get the money by Friday, you're evicted."

"Shit," Mike says, closing the door and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He opens the billfold of his battered leather wallet. Instead of cash, he comes up with a torn piece of notebook paper. "Needed some start-up capital. Will pay you back double next week," Mike reads. "God damn it, Trevor," he says, collapsing on the couch and throwing a hand over his eyes.

A minute later he drags himself vertical, sets out two bowls and pours the last of a box of Lucky Charms into them. Harvey falls on his bowl like it's manna from heaven.

After breakfast, Mike looks guiltily between the empty fridge, his empty wallet, and Harvey and then proceeds to call someone named Scott and have a disquieting conversation about a quick-cash opportunity.

"Don't even worry," Mike tells Harvey, pulling on a blue ball cap and pushing a pair of non-functional black framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "I'm just going to go do something and we'll have enough cash to back pay the rent _and_ buy food.

 _Please do not be going to sell a kidney to keep me in tuna_ , Harvey begs silently as Mike walks out the door.

\--

Mike comes back sans hat and glasses, but plus a wad of bills that he throws down on the kitchen table. "I got that asshole a 158 on the LSATs and he cuts my payment in half," Mike says angrily, "I'm drawing up a fucking contract for these people."

He sits down in front of an ancient Dell and waits five minutes while it boots up. Then he opens a word document and starts typing furiously. "There," Mike says, jabbing a period onto the end, "What do you think?" He turns the laptop so Harvey can see what he's written.

Harvey peers at the screen, feeling a growing incredulity. The two words Harvey has for Mike's contract are _concise_ and _airtight_. He presses closer to the screen and slips on the space bar. _Wait,_ Harvey thinks, scrambling back, _this could work._ He steps back on the keyboard.

It comes out _ggooood_ because he leaves too much pressure on the keys, but it clearly says _good._

"Did you just type feedback on a legal contract I drew up?" Mike asks.

Harvey holds down the space bar and then paws at the keyboard again. _hbarvey speecter_ , he manages to type out. "Who the hell is," Mike squints at the letters, "Harvey Speecter?"

 _Close enough,_ Harvey thinks. "Me," he says, pleased that his vocal cords can produce the sound he needs. "Ow," he says, less pleased, when Mike shoves abruptly back from the table, making it shudder on its thin, wobbling legs and sending Harvey careening to the floor.

"Holy shit, I really need to stop smoking pot," Mike says, staring at Harvey. Harvey eyes him with displeasure. "Okay, geez, I'm sorry I made you fall," Mike says, picking Harvey up and setting him back on the table. He rubs his eyes and blinks exaggeratedly before looking back at the computer screen. "It still says Harvey Speecter," Mike says, unnecessarily, "so either this is a long-term hallucination or something even weirder is going on."

He opens a Google tab and types in Harvey Speecter. Hundreds of websites pop up. Did you mean harvey **specter**? the autocorrect asks. Mike clicks on it. Then he clicks on the first link. "Hot," he says when a picture of Harvey comes up on the Pearson Hardman website, along with his profile.

Harvey preens.

Mike spends about five seconds reading the profile before hitting the back button and then clicking on a recent news article about Harvey's disappearance. That he looks at for approximately twenty seconds before repeating the process with the next five links like he's on Ritalin as well as pot.

"Okay," Mike says, "so, to summarize, Harvey Specter is a senior partner at the law firm Pearson Hardman. He graduated _cum laude_ from Harvard in '98, built a reputation as the city's best closer, and disappeared on the way to business meeting with Anna Buchanan two days ago."

Harvey nods, surprised that Mike was able to absorb all that during his frantic clicking and scanning.

"And apparently when he disappeared what actually happened was he turned into a cat and I brought him home with me," Mike adds.

Harvey nods again. _ab=witch,_ he informs Mike.

"All right," Mike says, "I'm not really sure what to do with that, so I'm going to go to bed now and if all this is still true in the morning we can deal with it then."

 _Fair,_ Harvey thinks.

\--

Everything is still true in the morning, but before any sort of plan can be hammered out, Mike goes to visit his grandmother and comes home with yet another new problem. It's like he's some kind of problem magnet.

"I need $25,000 dollars or they're sending my grandmother to a state-run facility," Mike says, breezing in the door with a suit over his shoulder. "Trevor's going to give me the money to do a handoff at the Chilton this afternoon, but a person is more likely to die dealing drugs than on death row. In Texas," Mike says, stripping down to his boxers and putting on the suit, "So I'm going to leave my friend Jenny a note about your situation in case I get busted or shot or something."

Mike scribbles something on a napkin and sprints out the door before Harvey can attempt to communicate his bank account numbers because, frankly, he made 25k last week sitting in Nolita eating sushi and racking up billable hours while his clients argued with each other about hookers and the prosecution's burden of proof.

Harvey jumps up on the counter to read the note. It says:

Jenny,  
My cat is actually a guy named Harvey Specter.  
Please try and help him turn human again. He's a lawyer  
and if you're reading this, I probably need a good one.  
-Mike

 _With this kind of evidence, any halfway decent lawyer would be able to get you off on an insanity plea,_ Harvey thinks.

As it turns out, Mike doesn't need a lawyer. He comes back two hours later with a shell-shocked expression and says, "I think I just bullshitted my way into a job at your firm while running from the cops, carrying a briefcase with $25,000 worth of pot." He shoves said briefcase into one of the empty pizza boxes he keeps in his oven for no discernable reason. Possibly nostalgia.

 _You are such an endearing fuckup_ , Harvey thinks.

\--

Mike's in at Pearson Hardman both solves his money issue and puts them one step closer to the witch that is Anna Buchanan.

On his first day, Mike drags himself in the door at half past ten with horror stories about Louis Litt, but a week later he's Louis' prized pony ("So creepy, Harvey," Mike says, shuddering, "You owe me huge for this.") and he's got access to Anna Buchanan's financials which should come in handy because they are probably going to need some serious leverage to get Harvey changed back.

Monday, Mike sneaks the financials home and spends the few precious hours he could be sleeping highlighting possible malfeasance and leaving the pages scattered around the apartment for Harvey to look over before he struggles into a cheap suit and bikes like Lance Armstrong to the office so he's not late.

 _buy new suits or youre fired,_ Harvey types laboriously into the blank NotePad application Mike has taken to leaving open for him when Mike gets back that night.

"I just bought these!" Mike protests, taking off his jacket and dropping it carelessly over the back of the couch.

 _from goodwill?_ Harvey asks.

Mike scowls. "Men's Warehouse," he mutters sulkily.

Harvey can see the loose stitching in the sleeves of Mike's jacket and the skinny tie is a travesty. He seriously considers taking Mike to Rene, which for Harvey evidences a level of commitment on par with bringing Mike home to his mother.

 _This must be what Stockholm Syndrome feels like,_ Harvey thinks, but then his eye catches on a suspicious transaction in one of the Buchanan files and he thinks, _Bingo._

\--

Mike calls Anna Buchanan and talks her into a morning meeting at Pearson Hardman through the unscrupulous use of his strange brand of boyish charm and carefully tailored lies. If Harvey had proper hands, he would have applauded.

Mike smuggles Harvey into the office in his messenger bag and sets it gently on one of the conference room chairs, flap open, close enough that Harvey can see the action when Mike accuses Buchanan of money laundering.

She blanches, eyes flicking over to Jessica like she might offer some support. Jessica stares back unflinchingly until Buchanan drops her eyes to the table.

"Ms. Buchanan," Mike says, "I don't really care about your financial indiscretions. I will work with the DA's office to get you a more than generous deal." Buchanan looks relieved. "However," Mike continues, "There is something that I need you to do for me."

"Anything," Buchanan says, desperately.

Mike reaches into his messenger bag and puts Harvey in the center of the table.

Harvey remembers once suggesting to Jessica that they have HR do psychological testing during the hiring process after the third associate of the year had a breakdown and tried to throw boiling hot coffee in Louis' face. At the time, she'd scoffed, but he can almost literally see her reconsidering it.

"Mr. Ross," Jessica says, standing up to intervene, but then Harvey is sitting on the conference table, human again and thankfully still wearing his Tom Ford suit, and she pulls up short, staring.

Harvey shakes out his arms and climbs down off the table.

"Explain," Jessica says.

\--

Jessica spends the next two hours jointly interrogating Harvey, Mike and Anna Buchanan and then a further hour and a half with just Harvey and a lot of scotch, judging his poor decision-making. _Only you could get into something this cracked,_ her eyes say. By the time she's threatened him with a tracking device and waved him out of her office, Mike has already disappeared back to the hovel Harvey was just starting to think of as home.

The thing is, moderate starvation and horrific living conditions aside, Harvey really does owe Mike big time and he doesn't like having debts.

Donna is still at her desk. For a second, Harvey wonders what she's been doing for the two weeks he's been gone, but considering she could probably take over a small European country in that time, he probably doesn't actually want to know.

When Donna sees him, she hugs him, kidney punches him and then slips right back into her scarily efficient secretary role, getting the bank manager of Chase Manhattan on the phone for him in thirty seconds flat.

"I paid your grandmother's nursing fees up through December of 2030," Harvey says as a greeting when Mike opens his door.

Mike blinks. "I'm not sure she's going to make it to a hundred and three, but thanks."

"No problem," Harvey says, "It's like that Bible story where Jesus gets invited to a wedding but they run out of booze so he turns the water into wine. Hospitality, however dismal, is rewarded."

"Are you Jesus in this metaphor?" Mike asks.

"Let's go out for dinner," Harvey says.

\--

Harvey doesn't do emotions. He doesn't _care._ It's just that Mike is endearingly quirky and ridiculously easy to please and a lot of other things Harvey never expected to like. Maybe a few feelings have caught him off-guard.

Mike's cheeks are flushed from the $2000 dollar bottle of wine Harvey ordered and his eyes are bright. Harvey bundles him into a cab, slides in beside him and gives the cabbie the address for his penthouse.

When they arrive, Mike says, with exaggerated offense, "Why, Mr. Specter, don't you think you're being a bit presumptuous?" He tugs Harvey's arm until it settles around his waist.

"You're the one who got naked in front of me," Harvey says, reeling Mike in close.

"Most people don't feel the need for strict modesty in front of their pets," Mike says, "and that was before I knew you weren't exactly a cat. But I'm sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities."

"No, I was pretty okay with it," Harvey says, pushing Mike against the door and leaning down so their mouths are aligned, centimeters apart.

"Well, good," Mike says, pressing into the offered kiss and then grinning cheekily up at Harvey, "because I think it might happen again."

 


End file.
